So, there’s been a lot of talk about the Mets’ batting order in recent days.
It started on the morning of Opening Day when news started to leak out that the Mets were going with an “unconventional” lineup that had David Wright batting second and Curtis Granderson leading off. Then the story became about who decided on the lineup. Was it a directive from Sandy Alderson? Does Terry Collins have any say on who bats where? How about the bench coach? Did he get involved?
Let’s do ourselves a favor and put the drama aside. Who cares who decides on the lineup?! Let’s worry instead about the actual lineup, and find out what makes sense for this current Mets team.
Before we get into particular players, it is important to understand why certain batting positions require different skill sets.
As the table below indicates (taken from The Book), players who bat at the beginning of the order are likely to see more plate appearances each game than those who bat further down the lineup. Makes sense. Nothing ground-breaking here.
Essentially, the players who bat first, second, and third, are going to come to the plate the most often, so they should probably be your better hitters (you rather bat good hitters than not-as-good hitters). They also should be hitters who can get on base. Why? Well, keep reading.
Next, power is a consideration. As the table above highlights, different batting positions are likely to see different men-on-base situations. The clean-up hitter, and that is why we call it “clean-up” after all, sees the most plate appearances with men on base. The third hitter comes up the second most times with runners on. It seems to make sense that these hitters (3rd and 4th) should have some power, so they can drive in runs by hitting the ball into the gap or over the wall.
On-base percentage and power become two key factors in choosing a lineup.
The players who bat at the top of the order, as we saw, come to the plate the most often, but with the least men on base, so they should be hitters who can get on base, but don’t necessarily need a lot of power, since they won’t have a lot of chances to drive in runs.
The middle of the order guys should have plenty of power, since they come to the plate with the bases occupied, and thus, their power is being utilized for driving in additional runs.
Let’s look at the Mets in terms of on-base percentage and power, using their performance over the past two seasons.
We can see from the chart that three players stick out from the rest, in terms of both power and the ability to get on base, and they are Michael Cuddyer, Lucas Duda, and David Wright.
If we follow our logic that power is best utilized towards the middle of the order, it is obvious that both Cuddyer and Duda are good candidates for the third and fourth spots in the lineup.
David Wright becomes an interesting case. Yes, he has power, but we also know that he doesn’t have the same power that he used to, and it’s hard to say if it will return. He gets on-base, he is probably the Mets best overall hitter, so it makes sense to bat him higher up in the lineup, where he will see a lot of at-bats. With his power too strong to bat lead-off, but perhaps not as great as Cuddyer or Duda, all of a sudden, batting second seems justified.
If Wright, Cuddyer, Duda are logical 2-3-4 hitters, that brings us to the million dollar question: who bats lead-off?
We have talked about on-base percentage and power, but so far we haven’t mentioned speed. The traditional lead-off hitter has always been a guy who not only gets on base, but can run the base paths. The idea is that a speedy runner can steal extra bases, for all of the times they reach first base, and also garner plenty of fastballs to the next hitters in the lineup from pitchers looking to offset that speed.
Speed is important for the reasons listed, but it shouldn’t be considered more important than the plain skill of getting on base. Speed only matters once you reach first base. Getting there is the real challenge.
For the Mets, right now, they are using Curtis Granderson as the lead-off hitter, and perhaps, his mix of OBP and speed is what made him the winning candidate. But, as the chart above highlights, the Mets are misusing Granderson at the lead-off position. Yes, he gets on base, but over the past two years, Daniel Murphy has reached base just as frequently. The difference between the two players, besides speed, is power.
Why bat Granderson lead-off, when his power is wasted? Batting first, he comes to the plate the least often with men on base. If he hits 20 home runs, those are a lot of solo shots. Meanwhile, Murphy, who, again, gets on base just as well as Granderson, doesn’t have the same power. He is a better candidate to fill the top of the order. And, while Granderson profiles better as a speed guy, Murphy has had better success on the base paths recently.
Who I am leaving out is Juan Lagares (editor’s note: my favorite player). While I hope to see Lagares develop his offensive game, and learn to be more patient at the plate, his past performance, over a large sample of data, is not strong enough to give me confidence that he can reach base as well as either Murphy or Granderson. For now, I would keep him lower in the lineup.
If you’ve been paying attention this deep into the article, so far we have Murphy-Wright-Cuddyer-Duda-Granderson-Lagares as an ideal lineup 1-6. That leaves the last two spots, and the pitcher, who last night batted eighth.
The problem with batting the pitcher eighth is that, ever so slightly, you are giving that “dead spot” in the lineup added at-bats. You are willing to do that so that the top of the order, as the lineup turns over, can have more at-bats with men on base, since the 9th hitter being a real hitter instead of a pitcher means he is more likely to do something productive. In reality, the difference in the actual numbers is so small that it would take doing this different lineup for every game throughout the season to see real change.
So if we keep the pitcher 9th, and we know that d’Arnaud is a better hitter than Flores, it becomes pretty easy to fill the bottom of the lineup with d’Arnaud-Flores-Pitcher.
There you have it!
The fun thing about baseball is that we can debate about batting order positions all season long. There are so many considerations beyond what was highlighted in this article. I chose to show the basic tenets of choosing a lineup. I didn’t consider righty/lefty, performance against a given pitcher, or a variety of other factors.
Hopefully, this distracted readers from the nonsense of who writes the lineup, and instead, will let you think about why a certain lineup make senses. It turns out the Mets aren’t so crazy!
Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs. Follow me on Twitter @OverWhitestone.
